Meaningless Existence Research Articles

Образ героини повести В. Яновского «Любовь вторая»: интертекст и автобиографический контекст

The article is devoted to a little-known story by the young emigrant writer V. Yanovsky “Love Second”. The author is known to the modern reader mainly by his memoir book “The Elysian Fields” (1983). However, he has a considerable artistic heritage, among which the analysed work takes one of the leading places. Thematically, it continues the plot line of homeless meaningless existence, which is topical for the young emigration, which connects it with the works of such authors as Gazdanov, Poplavsky, Felsen. Some fragments of the heroine’s search for a job are based on the biography of the writer himself. In this part of the plot, the influence of the “human document”, relevant to the poetics of the authors of the young emigration, is strong. However, unexpectedly Yanovsky turns his plot in the direction of the heroine’s discovery of the meaning of life, who discovers God through a sudden mystical experience. In this part, the plot is enriched with a new series of intertextual cross-relations, including the prose of L. Tolstoy, “The Book of My Life" by St. Teresa of Avila, Poplavsky’s novel “Apollo Bezobrazov”.

Nadzieja w dyskursie afektywnym Czesława Miłosza

The work aims to discuss the relationship between the vision of hope in Czesław Miłosz’s writing and the need for man to find meaning. The author realizes the theme based on the novel The Issa valley by the Polish Nobel Prize winner. The basic context in this sketch is the logotherapy project of Emanuel V. Frankl, professor of psychiatry and author of the bestseller Man in search of meaning. But another work by Frankl will be recalled here: The will of meaning, because in it the author included the assumptions of logotherapy. Other contexts introduced into this sketch are the cultural theory of emotions (Richard A. Shweder) and elements of the concept of subject (Michel Foucault). According to Miłosz – which results from the analysis of his novels – hope is necessary to find the meaning of existence. There is also an inverse relationship: the lack of hope has as its result a sense of meaningless existence, which can lead the hero of the novel to suicide. For Miłosz, finding the meaning of life, as well as not finding it, is a kind of mystery to which literature can make an approach. At the same time, literature can be something of a medium of meaning.

BINARY OPPOSITIONS IN LEONID ANDREEV’S CHRISTMAS STORY “ANGELOCHEK”

The article analyzes the story “Angelochek” (“The Little Angel”), which has an important place in the creativе work of Leonid Andreev, and is included in the school curriculum, where its plot is considered within the framework of the established literary approach to the Christmas story. Most of the researchers note the changes that occurred to the boy after his meeting with the angel, and believe that the Christmas miracle did happen, positively affecting Sashka’s life. The authors of this work propose a different approach to the story: binary oppositions (living-inanimate, truth-lie, real-fake, friend-alien, man-beast, earth-sky, etc.) are revealed, reflecting the ambivalence of the writer’s view of the problem; onomastic units, which, being part of symbolic and autobiographical contexts, make it possible to clarify the intent of the work, are considered. The plot of the story is autobiographical (the angel, once removed by the future writer from the Christmas tree and placed on the stove, melts), but the main character is now a boy from a poor family who goes to celebrate the holiday to the rich patrons, the Svechnikovs. The space of the Svechnikov house is ambivalent: for the father it is a symbol of lost paradise, and for the son it is the habitat of devils, because the Christmas symbols filling the house are fake. Acquisition of humanity through the rebirth of the soul is the most significant theme of the story, realized through the “man-beast” opposition. Sashka’s family is inscribed in the zoomorphic code of the text of the story. Possessing the angel creates a feeling of “human happiness,” which results in the elimination of the animal element in the boy’s image. However, the memory of his father, who is part of the anti-house, brings Sashka’s animal appearance back. The “iving-inanimate” opposition sets the parameters of Sashka’s fate, for whom “non-life” is the only possible way out of the cycle of meaningless existence. The hope for the rebirth of the boy’s soul is illusory (the opposition is “real-fake”). By the end of the story, the motifs of gravity and immersion in the abyss are intensified: the personification of salvation — a melted angel with dragonfly wings — falls to the floor at the end of Christmas. A cockroach that is unable to fly now becomes the symbol of substitution. The illusory nature of hopes is confirmed by the chronotope of the story. Christmas breaks the cycle of existence and introduces the boy to the circle of eternity, but the striking of the clock brings the heroes back to earth and accelerates their biological time. The image of the “frozen water carrier” in the story’s finale is a symbol of the return of cyclicity to the child’s life and a sign that the revival did not take place.

The Land and the Waste: Meaninglessness and Absurdity in T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land

After the World War-1, there spread chaos and disillusionment in society, faith got shattered and life became meaningless. Jean-Paul Sartre’s version of Existentialism is based on this meaninglessness and absurdity. Man faces an absurd and meaningless existence in this chaotic world. Thus these two are the main tropes of Sartre’s philosophy. T. S. Eliot also lived in that chaotic age and composed his long narrative poem The Waste Land (1930) after the World War. This poem is based on the consequences of the war that caused absurdity and chaos depriving human life of real significance and value. This study explores and analyses these aspects of meaninglessness and absurdity in The Waste Land (1930) in the light of Sartre’s philosophy and contends to say that almost all of the characters presented in the poem encounter meaningless and chaotic lives. Their lives are without any real purpose and are quite insignificant in a chaotic and disorderly world. So the land is full of the waste only. This meaningless life is nothing but a heap of the waste. By presenting this picture of chaotic life, Eliot intends to forward a solution in the form of rebirth of the lost religious faith and moral values. This research is significant because the aspects of meaninglessness and absurdity accurately relate to our current times where human beings face real existential threat and the significance of life is being lost. This awareness may lead to an immediate solution. Moreover, this study may provoke further research in this area in order to bring out the relevance of literary texts to all times and human life everywhere.

Internalization and Opposition to Stigmatized Social Discourse among Incest Survivors

ABSTRACT Despite the high prevalence of incest, survivors are reluctant to disclose its existence for reasons such as shame, guilt and the presence of an accusatory and stigmatizing social discourse. The current mixed methods study examined the internal discourses of 13 incest survivors in Israel, reflected in self-reported internal dialogs which emerged during interviews. The qualitative analysis revealed a dialectical tension between two themes – one reflecting an internalization of the social discourse (manifested as quotes taken from social discourse and uttered by the survivors) and the other an agentic discourse (manifested in utterances either resisting the social discourse or showing an empowering advertence to one’s own fulcrum). The quantitative analysis showed that for seven participants the internalized social discourse expressions were most frequent, for five the agentic expressions were most frequent, and that for one the discourses were at equilibrium. The ubiquitous sub-themes manifested in the internalized social discourse were: victimhood (feelings of vulnerability and helplessness), survivorship (meaningless existence, despair and hopelessness), negative self-esteem and self-pathology (perception of the self as having pathological psychological problems), and denial/repression of the abuse. The ubiquitous sub-themes manifested in the agentic discourse were: positive self-image and sense of potency, hope, optimism and positive perception of life, and uprising against the parents and institutions that did not give support. The discussion is based on Butler’s concept of vulnerability, which suggests how to address the harms inflicted by incest without erasing aspects of the survivors’ agency and growth.

Intersections of Memory, Politics, and Identity in Reading Lolita in Tehran

This research analyses the role of cultural memory in (re)shaping identities in the memoir of Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (2003) to expose the hegemonic construct that silences and devalues women in society. The theoretical framework used for this research is drawn from New Historicism and Assman's Cultural Memory Theory. It explores how politics and religion eliminates one's private life. Women become instrumentalized as passive objects, living an act of meaningless existence under the gaze of the Blind Censor. Her work highlights the need to dismantle the political agenda that takes away one's identity. By recalling her experiences as a teacher, she foregrounds the stories of her girls to (re)invent a new meaning at the backdrop of the Islamic Regime. The author recounts memories of the past to fill the void left behind by the Iranian Revolution. By embodying the works of literature in her memoir, she forms a counter-reality, one, where memory acts as an escape from the strict policies and repression of women under the Islamic regime. It also observes how veiling had become a way of stripping away the individuality andpersonality of women. The research illuminates the author's aim to remember and expose the dehumanizing impact of the Iranian government on the lives of women. It also focuses on Azar Nafisi's writings to analyze how she has (re)shaped the identities of her students by constructing an alternative narrative and forming a link between fiction and reality.

The role of media policy in social networks and its challenges and perspectives

Now is the time when everything is developing rapidly. Many things have been transformed within a short period of time. With the development of technology, people also began to change. A person who spends a lot of time on the Internet loses, first, itself. Mental health and attitude of the person to the surrounding world are changing too. The worst thing is that the person becomes addicted to the Internet, goes away from real life, and completely immerses himself in the world of the Internet. Therefore, we must not allow Internet addiction. Otherwise, we are risking shortening our already short life and turn it into meaningless existence. Television, the Internet, and social networks have been in the process of integration, that is, at the stage of involvement, for almost 15 years. The way of using them is for everyone’s personal matter; someone may correctly use Internet resources; others may abuse them. The Internet should be considered as a source of information, not as a competitor. The matter is that journalism is always in need of innovation. Kazakh ancestors said: Keep up with the times, that is, do not stay behind. So that, journalism should move with the times, taking a place on the front line. Only those media organizations that unite both sides may be a few steps ahead.

Public administration in the political and legal space of modern Ukraine: problems, causes of failures, prospects

The two-part article examines problems of political-legal basis of effective public administration of modern Ukraine, analyzes the reasons for the failure of the negative consequences of the current system of public administration, presents possible future development of the modern Ukrainian state under the rule of radical nationalism, Russophobia and external political and control action. The author substantiates the necessity of forming a modern legal, professional and moral culture of the management apparatus, mastering the ability to stimulate, create and multiply, but not to slow down and destroy.
 The author of the article aims to prove scientifically and on concrete facts that the tasks of modernization and social renewal can be implemented effectively by a highly professional, well-structured, nationally oriented state apparatus, a highly effective and authoritative public service.
 The theoretical and methodological basis of the study is a dialectical materialistic approach to the analysis of social phenomena and mechanisms of public administration, both horizontally (genetic aspects) the essence, laws, goals, functions, principles, specific historical manifestations (taking into account the geopolitical and national-country specifics), and vertically (ideals, interests, forms and methods of legal regulation and strategic management influence) on them. A wide range of methods of scientific knowledge is used: comparative-legal, formal-logical, concrete-historical, system-functional.
 The article presents the authors analysis of the inconsistency of post-soviet state construction, as well as the features and effectiveness of public administration and the causes of the crisis trend of socio-economic development of modern Ukraine, possible scenarios for future development. It is proved that the current stage of historical development for Ukraine is not just a period of becoming a sovereign state, but a time of revaluation of historical values and an attempt to adapt to the standards of the European way of life. In the meantime, the country is going through an extremely difficult, in fact, systemic crisis stage of state construction.
 The author comes to the conclusion that in fact there is no strategically effective management system in modern Ukraine. The task of forming an effective system of public administration remains one of the most urgent tasks. Management goals and measures for their effective implementation must be politically, legally and economically justified, reflect the deep interest of society with the understanding that if a country does not have a strategic goal and no higher meanings, then life turns into a meaningless existence, the state falls into a situation of turbulence, disintegration and dispersion. Therefore, what is planned should be implemented systematically and consistently, in strict accordance with the law and in a healthy moral and political space. The key to success is social trust, strong political leadership, responsibility and constructive action.

Celebration of Meaninglessness in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five

This is an exploratory inquiry on Slaughterhouse-Five of Kurt Vonnegut. The inquiry uses insights from the postmodernist art to investigate how the novel celebrates the meaninglessness employing various techniques and how the protagonist Billy Pilgrim comes to terms with his meaningless existence. It was found that the novel uses the postmodernist novelistic technic and theme such as the use of the subversion of narration, pastiche, parody, intertextuality, adaptation, alienation, paradox, fragmented character and narrative structure as the devices for diminishing painful experiences of Second World War.

Absurdity, Incongruity and Laughter. Philosophy

In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus advocates scornful defi ance in the face of our absurd, meaningless existence. Although Nagel agrees that human life possesses an absurd dimension, he objects to Camus’ existentialist „dramatics”. For Nagel, absurdity arises from the irreducible tension between our subjective and objective perspectives on life. The article offers a critical reconstruction of Camus’ and Nagel’s positions, and elaborates Nagel’s critique of Camus in order to argue that humour is an appropriate response to absurdity.

Experiencing Panismo in Sorrentino's The Great Beauty, Youth and Loro

Abstract This paper aims to disavow the widespread argument that many of Sorrentino's films are set in what Marc Augé would call non-spaces. Non-place or nonplace is a neologism coined by this French anthropologist to refer to anthropological spaces of transience, where human beings remain anonymous and do not hold enough significance to be regarded as places. However, through an approach inspired by psychogeography and ecocriticism, I will argue that in Sorrentino's films The Great Beauty (2013), Youth (2015), and the diptych Loro 1 and Loro 2 (2018), these non-places undergo a profound ontological transformation. They become significant because their powerful energy becomes a synergy that enters the characters, helping them to overcome their meaningless existence, to transform their lives, and find their lost inspiration. Sorrentino's characters use cityscapes (in The Great Beauty), landscapes (in Youth), and domestic spaces (in Loro 1 and Loro 2) as tools to heal their malaise, artistic aridity, and psychological discontent. They achieve this through a sort of Dannunzian Panismo, which entails an intense fusion between humans and the environment. What is atypical from a Dannunzian perspective is the hypothesis of possibly attaining a panic fusion in a natural and in an urban context, cityscape or domestic space.

Effect of mercerized surface treated natural fiber to the tensile properties of green composite

This research deals with fabrication and tensile properties characterization of green composite (GC). In this research, GC was made from ramie, coir and bagasse fiber as reinforcement with polylactic acid (PLA) biodegradable resin. To improve the adhesion between fiber and PLA also increasing tensile properties of GC, mercerization or NaOH fiber treatment is used. This is aimed to observe the effect of NaOH fiber surface treatment on the tensile properties of GC. Ramie, bagasse, and coir fiber were chopped (2-3mm) and immersed in 5 wt% NaOH for 2, 3 and 4 hours respectively. The GC with ten wt% fiber loading was prepared by pouring the fiber in a melted PLA at 170°C and stirring them for a homogenizing process. Then pour it in a metallic mold, the pressure at 10MPa was applied for 10 minutes. Six types of GC were obtained, such as R/PLA, C/PLA, B/PLA, RC / PLA, RB/PLA, and RCB/PLA, both of untreated and NaOH treated fiber. The tensile test was done to observe the effect of NaOH fiber surface treatment on the tensile properties of GC. The entire result showed that the tensile properties of GC were affected by fiber surface treatment and meaningless existence. The highest tensile strength and modulus of elasticity were obtained from GC with untreated R/PLA, 56.88±1.17 MPa and 363.37±11.44 MPa respectively.

Estética e leitmotiv político: analisando o jovem Lukács a partir de Thomas Mann e Henrik Ibsen

Pretendemos neste artigo analisar o leitmotiv político do jovem Lukácsatravés dos problemas centrais levantados por Thomas Mann e Henrik Ibsenem suas obras Tönio Kroger (1903) e Quando despertarmos dentre os mortos (1899). Ajustificativa deste caminho adotado dá-se pelo fato de o próprio filósofo húngaroter anunciado na sua maturidade que as problemáticas das referidas obrasexerceram fortes influências sobre seu estado de espírito juvenil. Cabe dizerque neste período de juventude György Lukács caracterizou-se por uma profundarecusa do mundo burguês traduzida numa espécie de anticapitalismoromântico. Desta forma, compreendemos que a leitura de Mann e Ibsen podeser elucidativa ao entendimento das singularidades deste leitmotiv político dojovem Lukács. O presente artigo divide-se em três momentos substanciais: noprimeiro, precedido por observações introdutórias acerca de György Lukács,analisamos uma síntese inalcançável presente em Tönio Kroger: a síntese entrearte e vida cotidiana. No segundo, voltamos os olhos para o fio condutor deQuando despertarmos dentre os mortos: o conflito entre arte e vida como ilustraçãode uma existência sem sentido sob o mundo burguês. E no terceiro e últimomomento, analisamos o anticapitalismo romântico do jovem Lukács em diálogocom os dramas vividos por Kroger e Rubek.

Demythologizing and remythologizing Shakespeare in the context of Bulgarian politics

The article reviews three Bulgarian Shakespeare productions performed during the 2011–2012 and 2012–2013 seasons in the context of current developments in the country’s politics to demonstrate how demythologizing and remythologizing Shakespeare on the stage reflect the opposing forces of desperation and hope that characterize Bulgarian society at a particularly difficult moment in its history. Tedi Moskov’s McBeth and Richard III shrewdly explode the mythical inviolability of Shakespeare’s text to demonstrate current political problems, whilst Ivan Dobchev and Georgi Tenev’s Wittenberg Revisited rewrites Shakespeare to explore young people’s urge to break away from a meaningless existence in a decaying state.

The meaningfulness of participating in support groups for informal caregivers of older adults with dementia: a systematic review.

Informal caregivers who perform at-home care of older people with dementia might have feelings of a meaningless existence, burden, anxiety, stress and fatigue. Support groups are considered an especially effective and economical way to relieve informal caregivers' stress and burden, although it is unclear if participating in group meetings produces a meaningful outcome for the informal caregiver. To identify the meaningfulness of participating in support groups for informal caregivers of older adults with dementia living in their own home. Informal caregivers of older adults aged 65 years and over with dementia. The informal caregiver was a family member, and care was performed at home. How the informal caregivers perceived the meaningfulness of participating in support groups. The setting was all locations where support groups for informal caregivers were held and studied. TYPES OF STUDIES: Studies that focused on qualitative data including, but not limited to, designs such as phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, action research and feminist research. TYPES OF OUTCOMES: Subjective accounts of the informal caregivers' perceptions of the meaningfulness associated with participating in support groups. Beliefs, benefits, rewards and attitudes related to a caregiver's experiences as a participant in support groups and in the role as caregiver. The perception by informal caregivers of participating in support groups as a way to release stress. The search aimed at finding published and unpublished studies in English, German, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian, and was unrestricted by time. Eleven electronic databases and eleven websites were searched. Methodological quality of the qualitative papers was assessed independently by two reviewers using standardized critical appraisal instruments from the Joanna Briggs Institute Qualitative Assessment and Review Instrument. Qualitative data were extracted from papers included in the review using the standardized data extraction tool from the Joanna Briggs Institute Qualitative Assessment and Review Instrument. Qualitative research findings were synthesized using the Joanna Briggs Institute Qualitative Assessment and Review Instrument. A total of 59 findings from five studies were aggregated into five categories. Three synthesized findings were generated based on the meta-aggregation of the categories: 1) emotional benefits of peer-based support; 2) facing the challenges of caregiving; and 3) embracing the future through virtual configuration of group meetings. The five studies provided useful and credible findings from caregivers' voices that are not often heard in regard to the meaning of participating in support groups. Peer support is beneficial for caregivers, and it provides a source of positive emotional support and a means of venting negative feeling and gaining help to address issues in the everyday life of caring for older adults with dementia.

The Romantic and Symbolist Sublime: A Review Essay

The Romantic and Symbolist Sublime: A Review Essay Phillip M. Richards (bio) One rarely thinks of the Romantic and Symbolist convention of the sublime in relation to the formal structures of African American verse. The expansive imagery of infinitude associated with the genre of the sublime is a crucial element throughout American as well as in African American poetry following the first two decades of the twentieth century. If aesthetic appreciation is grounded in the creation of interest by contrasting distinctive elements amidst regularly arranged or conceived patterns, then the sublime becomes an important formal device in black poetry. Such interest emerges inevitably as all-inclusive gestures of transcendence emerge from ordered intellectual and formal patterns. The articulation of this aesthetic phenomenon thus understandably provides a means of assessing the most recent group of contemporary black, female poets. Their achievement in this regard is a mark of their technical development contrasted to that of their immediate predecessors as well as to the central figures in the tradition of African American literature as a whole. Such an assessment has become necessary, largely because of the contemporary absence of a critical perspective that weighs the literary powers of the plethora of black women poets now multiplying from the available opportunities for publication offered by small presses every year. Just as importantly, we are failing to perform the act of critical evaluation by which we winnow out from a growing mass of writing what we wish to transmit from generation to generation in our classrooms, scholarship, literary journalism, and anthologies—which traditionally have figured in the selective assessment of African American literary tradition from generation to generation. These literary historical and evaluative discussions demand a formalist consideration of how the romantic and symbolist sublime has been deployed by the most recent crop of African American women poets to whom I refer above. In examining their use of the dominant conventions of Romanticism and Symbolism we see their connection not only with African American poetic discourse but also Anglo-European literary traditions—a continuity with distant roots in the highly metaphorical languages of early American culture, but also grounded in the literary transcendentalist writers: Emerson, Whitman, and Emily Dickinson—a group which in turn looks back to Romanticism as it developed in English and German poetry. From the second decade of the twentieth century, important black poets such as Langston Hughes and Sterling Brown assimilated black folk tradition into a literary language, which might carry the weight of essentially philosophical themes despite the fact that they often denied their engagement in the abstract reflection that these formulations demanded. At the heart of this philosophical tradition was their representation of the black folk’s angst [End Page 186] before an existential situation characterized by either infinite joy or infinite hope. This reflection upon the meaning of human existence in a rigorously secular culture rejecting the existence of a divine supernatural entity underlies a central project of Romanticism, Post-Romanticism, and Modernism. The search for transcendent meaning in these philosophical cultures has led many thinkers to rearticulate religious discourse in secularized social, psychological, and intellectual terms. These attempts to create ultimate meanings absent the sacred appear vividly in what Thomas Carlyle called “natural supernaturalism” and more recently in Lionel Trilling’s concept of the “secularization of the spirit.” Clearly, some of the most significant black writers have had a particular purchase upon this problem of African American life in modernity. The psychological and social traumas of the formation of the Northern ghetto and the Jim Crow South characteristically faced black writers with the task of shaping the language of black folk into a response to modernity’s crisis of a radically secular absurd and meaningless existence. And these writers did so through the conventions of the sublime in which they portrayed black folk confronting these abysses of meaning with the assertion of an infinitely expansive joy. Or these writers depicted the psychological condition of the folk facing the abyss in another form: the depiction of the feelings generated by a contracted spiritual emptiness. These feelings of despair might also emerge from a confrontation with another infinitude: a total loss often embodied in separation from significant others...

Beings: Contemporary Peruvian Short Stories by Anna Heath, tr.

62 WLT JANUARY/ FEBRUARY 2015 world literature in review As a reader, I was unable to put this collection down. I was enchanted from the first line—“So, have you made your mind up yet?”—of Lane Ashfeldt’s first story, “The Boat Trip.” I was captivated, and the author kept me captivated until the last line of the last tale, “Outer Banks Riptide”: “It is late into the night, that time after the moon is done when the stars burn brighter than ever, making little points of light in the still water ahead of her as well as in the sky above.” Janet Mary Livesey University of Oklahoma Beings: Contemporary Peruvian Short Stories. Anna Heath, tr. London. Berforts Information Press. 2014. isbn 9781908616739 This anthology of contemporary Peruvian short fiction, beginning in the 1950s, is comprised of eight short stories by wellknown authors and includes several present -day writers. During the middle of the twentieth century, a new generation of writers emerged in Peru. While still committed to depicting social reality, they were also concerned with the modernization and renovation of literary expression by moving away from traditionally realist fiction . The result of that new writing was neorealism, which favored urban settings linked to the incorporation of technical developments of mainstream European and American fiction. Julio Ramón Ribeyro is Peru’s most notable exponent of short fiction in the twentieth century. His story, “Alienation,” depicts Peru’s deep-rooted social and racial tensions, as seen in the tragically comic life of a youngster in Lima who struggles to deny his Afro-Peruvian identity in order to become an American. In New York, his encounter with the American dream tragically falls apart and eventually leads him to his grave on a Korean battlefield. Along with this masterpiece , it is worth noting Luis Loayza’s “Cold Afternoons,” a story about a love affair between a university professor and a member of the upper class. Vaguely set in the late 1960s, Loayza’s tale is as much a chronicle of false social appearances as it is of Lima’s slow transformation into a modern city. While seemingly cheerful and romantic during the summer, Peru’s capital ultimately proves to be a melancholic and somber place for the characters in the story. Youth and sexual initiation are at the center of Fernando Ampuero’s “Bad Manners .” Set in Lima in the 1960s, the firstperson narrator recounts the lives of a group of friends at a summer resort and their coming of age, centering on a beautiful yet distant young girl who is the source of great mystery and nostalgia. Also included in this anthology are three accomplished writers who first published in the 1980s: Guillermo Niño de Guzmán, Jorge Eduardo Benavides, and Alonso Cueto. In “No More Than a Shadow ,” Niño de Guzmán explores the psychological scars left by a frustrated past through the casual encounter of two lovers. Benavides’s story, “It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way,” is a masterfully concise and sexually charged narrative of subtle deceit and lust. Cueto displays his storytelling talents in “The Love Artist,” a fast-paced piece that not only profiles countless amorous adventures of an ordinary office employee but also underscores the protagonist’s meaningless existence and solitude. Two recent writers whose works deserve attention are Ricardo Sumalavia and Gunter Silva. Sumalavia’s “The Offering” is a well-crafted narrative of hidden jealously and desire with a surprisingly violent ending . Silva’s “Homesick” is a compelling story of migration and the marginalization of Latin Americans struggling against all odds to survive in London. Ably translated by Anna Heath, this anthology is a welcome and timely contribution that makes available some of the best short fiction to come out of Peru in recent decades. Her translation will surely be of interest to readers of Latin American fiction in English. This book has been subsidized by the Fundación para la Literatura Peruana (Foundation for Peruvian Literature ), a nonprofit organization whose goal is to create greater visibility for Peruvian contemporary fiction. César Ferreira University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Mehdi Dadsetan. La danse des ombres. Nice. Éditions Rod. 2014. isbn 9791093467023...

A psicanálise é uma ciência e o discurso analítico é uma práxis?

Proponho neste artigo que a psicanálise no sentido absoluto insere-se no campo da ciência. Com a topologia, os matemas, as fórmulas da sexuação e os nós borromeanos, Lacan insistiu em separar as estruturas do sentido. Faço uma distinção entre ciência e práxis, admitindo que a psicanálise se divide entre uma e outra. Entretanto, se a psicanálise no sentido absoluto é uma experiência que conduz a uma existência expurgada de sentido, tal distinção merece ser reexaminada.

The meaning of the lived experiences of adults with intellectual disabilities in a Swedish institutional care setting: a reflective lifeworld approach

This study describes the meaning of the lived experiences of adults with intellectual disabilities in a Swedish institutional care setting. Despite the general intention of the Swedish law to give care and support for adults with intellectual disabilities in small settings in the community, large institutional care settings exist in Sweden. It is also known that adults with intellectual disabilities have more influence over their care and support when living in small settings than in large institutions. There is a dearth research in regard to studies that focus on how adults with intellectual disabilities experiences their everyday life in such settings. A qualitative design was used to gain a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of adults with intellectual disabilities in an institutional care setting in Sweden. Fieldwork from September 2006 to June 2009 in an institutional care setting including participant observation and in-depth interviews with 12 residents was used. Verbatim-transcribed text was analysed using a phenomenological reflective lifeworld approach. The essential picture of the phenomenon was experienced 'as a meaningful and meaningless existence' and was reflected in residents' descriptions of their everyday life in the setting. It was characterised by the constituents: ambiguous dependency, social interactions and everyday life in a restricted area. The results reveal the importance of paying close attention to what adults with intellectual disabilities have to say about their everyday life when living in an institutional care setting. For caring practices of people with intellectual disabilities, it is scarcely satisfactory that residents experience an ambivalent dependency and of having to live in a restricted area. The results of this study contribute to better insight and deeper knowledge of the lived experiences of adults with intellectual disabilities, enabling the staff and management to further enhance the well-being for residents. In addition, the findings provide feedback to staff, managers and researchers working in the intellectual disabilities field.

Struggle Between Survival and Death: The Life Experiences of Taiwanese Older Adults with Suicidal Ideation

The purpose of this study was to use grounded theory to explore the subjective experiences of suicidal ideation among Taiwanese older adults in the community. Fifteen participants ages 66 to 88 were interviewed, and data were analyzed using a constant comparative analysis method. The Struggle Between Survival and Death was defined as the core category. Loss of loved ones, possession, and health was defined as the antecedent condition. The older adults struggled between survival and death during a suicidal ideation process categorized as negative emotions without an outlet, reminiscence about past achievements,lingering or persistent suicidal ideation, and hesitation to commit suicide. Lastly, the participants reported experiencing a meaningless existence in their daily lives. It is crucial to provide sensitive support to older adults who have had loss of life experiences, including providing an outlet to express negative emotions, religious support, reminiscence therapy, or a life review.